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"Can someone
give me an idea of the time (hours) needed to get it into "ready to prime"
condition?"
Yes. Unreasonably many hours.
- but answers will vary. You
might think you are ready for primer, but after shooting that coat of primer,
you will find new spots that need attention. So you fix these spots, find some
new spots (and pinholes!!!), fix those and so on.
I guess the answer is that you can think you
are ready for primer after maybe 100 hours. You are not, but you won´t
realize that until the primer is shot. If your painter is supposed to produce a
nice paintjob and starts charging you from here, you might as well sell that
house right away.....
On the other hand, you will feel you are wasting your time
looking for nearly invisible imperfections on a multicolored surface. It is hard
to spot anything this way. Especially pinholes are invisible on a sanded
surface, but show up beautifully in new paint.
I just finished painting my 360MKII. I did not count
hours, but it has taken more than 500 hrs., no doubt about that.
In my case there was no such thing as a fixed amount of
"time to primer", the whole paint job was more like a continous
process of surface improvement and elimination of flaws. Two steps forward and
one step back.....
I went with the full monty, 2 colors, clear coat, wet sand
and buff. And, of course, squares instead of stripes, why not mess up your life
thoroughly, now you´re at it anyway.....
Many can do with less and save, maybe, 150 hours of work.
That pretty much leaves us at at 300 - 400 hrs. for a decent one color
urethane paintjob. The "time to primer" is 90% of this time, it really does not
take that much time to mask off, shoot primer, wet sand with 800 grit and shoot
one coat of paint, provided there is a monkey around to fix imperfections, fill
pinholes and do all that other stuff.
I did all the work myself, the professional painter only
mixed and shot the paint on the fuselage, maybe 6 hrs. all together. I painted
the rest in my workshop at home. If you decide to do so, be aware that your
workshop will be trashed afterwards!
No matter what you do, fill all weave surfaces with resin
or micro slurry before applying primer. Otherwise you will end up with a
nice weave texture in your paint. I did and I am sorry!
I have attached a few photos to show what you are in
for:
009.jpg
l10354.jpg
Imgp0427.jpg
Billede0018.jpg
l11171.jpg
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